Art

In the year 1968, during an extensive and memorable stay in New York, critically-acclaimed Argentinean avant-garde artist Marta Minujin concocted a controversial multimedia exhibit that explored the social codes of the New York social scene and using its elite denizens as subject. This April 2010, we revisit the project, entitled Minucode, after a more than forty-year hiatus as it was presented during its initial year of exhibition. Curated by Gabriela Rangel and Jose Luis Blondet, the project also finds its way back home in the former headquarters of the Rockefeller-funded Center for Inter-American Relations, now the Americas Society, where it was first produced and shown. Also in display are other works by Minujin that are integrally connected to the project Simultaneid en Simultanei (1966), a collaboration with Allan Kaprow and Wolf Vostell and Circuit (1967).
After an extensive surveying of the exhibit, I found it easy to understand the height of influence that the avant-garde movement attained during its golden years in the sixties. With artists like Minujin and avant-garde poster child Andy Warhol as one of its many purveyors, we can undoubtedly see the extent of artistic creativity that these artists were able to explore and employ during these fervent years.
A look into the hegemony found in New Yorks cocktail parties, the project entailed inviting some of the citys elite in the fields of politics, business, fashion and, art and observing their behaviour and mannerisms in a controlled environment. Partially a psychological treatise, Minujin held four separate soirees in the CIAR that involved people from the same fields, some of which were chosen because of their obsession with their work through a massive accumulation of questionnaires that entailed the aid of major publications in the city. The interactions were then documented profusely using different mediums like film and photography that could viewed in partiality in the present exhibit.
Evidence could be seen with the care and concern put in creating this revival of Minujins work. Moving through the three rooms, some of the walls an alabaster white perfect for display, we see how the curators took pains in recreating the original feel of Minujins exhibition. I particularly like how the audience were invited to employ the use of a movable cart equipped with a computer and a projector that showed original footage and soundtrack from the production of the project. Such interaction with the audience is remarkably few in the art scene. Documentation of the event was also projected on the walls of the exhibit as viewed in one of the rooms. Like dark shadows moving carelessly, cigarettes at hand, this part of the exhibit gave the viewer a sense of being surrounded by the action and seeing the project as it had happened.  As additional substantiation, photographs of Minujins subject in the environment she created were plastered on the walls, some in poignant black and white, some in vivid color, all depicting her subjects amidst their torrid mingling. Also available for viewing were the questionnaires and transcribed reactionary papers that detailed Minujins process in fulfilling this project. Like valued commodities, these sheets of aging, typewritten paper were enclosed in glass casings that stood in the middle of one of the rooms. One can also view the numerous gelatin sheets that the artist used for her light shows.  Vibrant and iconoclastic of sixties culture, the light that passed through these sheets served as a subtle backdrop to the artists attempt at an almost literal social deconstruction. Also at hand, were other documents and press-clippings of Minujins other shows during her artistically productive time in New York.
This kind of care for the documentation that the curators took pains in arranging just show how Minujins work, despite time and context, is still seen as valuable aspect of the 1960s avant-garde movement. Her work is clearly a reflection of the changing landscape of art during the 60s.  With an expanding economy and the world in general acceptance of the arts, these artists were given a kind of artistic freedom supported by the patronage of the state that far surpassed that of their predecessors. Most particular, in this sense, was festive and intense art movements in Argentina, which Minujin was part of. Also known as the countrys golden art years, this epoch was characterized by the need to break away from the characteristic channels and formats of the modern aesthetic experience and the feelings of political urgency that dominated that 1960s. As with other avant-garde artists, Minujin took to ritual and narrative to showcase the essence of her work, using textualization for her art accede interpretation in the myriad dialect of the vox populi. Other Argentinean artists who moved in the same path as Minujin in attaining international artistic notoriety were Luis Felipe Noe and Ruben Santantonin, which whom Minujin also collaborated with. Like Minujin, these artists favoured the postmodern appeal of installation and performance art. Noe, moving to New York at almost the same time as Minujin, created in his city studio an installation that discussed his analysis of broken vision or the virtual and physical compartmentalization of painting. Sharing with Minujin anti-aesthetic sentiments through the use of non-conventional materials, Santonins creative thesis revolves around the reflection of the existential and phenomenological particularities of art.
Her work, part psychological, part voyeuristic, is a clear reflection of her views of the American elite, the social structure that formulates such shallow relationships. In one article, she wrote, she mentioned that she deemed for the people who were part of the experiment to see themselves, see their being in from an outside perspective, and be able to assess their mannerisms and behaviours, correcting those that are correctable. Using her insight as springboard, we can find her works relevance in our time as we attempt to deconstruct our societys structures and understand its intricacies.